"Excellent. I should like to see her alone. It is right that she should hear my story."
So to the school they went. Laverne came in a little flurried, and yet bewitching in her simple girlhood. Her bodice was rather low about the throat, with some edging around, and a band of black velvet encircled her white neck. Her skirt was ankle length, and the man noted her trim, slender feet, with the high arch of the instep.
Mrs. Westbury kissed her with warmth and tenderness. Her eyes were luminous this morning, and the flushes showed above the delicately tinted cheeks; her whole air was pleading, enchanting.
"You know I said there was a strange story for you to hear," she exclaimed, when they had talked at length about the fire. "Mr. Westbury will tell you."
He began to pace up and down, as was his habit, so slowly that it gave him an air of thoughtfulness. Mrs. Westbury had her arm around Laverne.
"Yes, a rather curious story, yet numbers of these instances crop out along life. Friends, often relatives are reunited, tangled threads are straightened, mysteries explained. In a little village in Maine lived a girl and her two friends, they were a little too old for real schoolmates. Her name was Laverne Dallas."
Why, that was her mother's name. And Maine. She began to listen attentively, just as one pieces out a dream that has nearly escaped from memory. And Westbury! Why, she had forgotten she ever had any other name than Chadsey—it was her story as well, and now she looked at the man, who certainly had nothing repellant about him, and the story of those early years was pathetic as he lent it several appealing embellishments. She really could not remember him with any distinctness. The death of her grandmother, the pale, reserved mother, coughing and holding on to her side, the coming of Uncle Jason, who it seemed was no uncle at all, her mother's death, and all the rest was school and play.
"Oh! Oh!" she cried, and hid her face on Mrs. Westbury's shoulder.
"So you see you are my little daughter. Your own mother is not here to care for you and make you happy, but here is a new mother, who has learned to love you unaware. And now we are returning to London, and will take you with us, and give you the life that rightly belongs to you——"
"Oh, no, no," she interrupted with poignant pathos. "I cannot go. I could not leave Uncle Jason in this sad loss and trouble. He has been so good, so kind, so tender——"